Alwan for the Arts Presents the 2014 ALWAN ART AUCTION, 6/26

Alwan for the Arts, the premier organization promoting the contemporary arts and cultures of the Middle East in the United States, is pleased to present the 2014 Alwan Art Auction. The exhibition and reception will take place on Thursday, June 26, 2014, from 5 pm to 9 pm at Shirin Gallery, located at 511 West 25th Street, Suite 507, New York, New York, 10001. Alwan has partnered with online auction house Paddle8 to allow a global collecting community to participate in this benefit auction. The Paddle8 Benefit Auction will be live for bidding from Monday, June 16 to Monday, June 30 at paddle8.com/auctions/alwan.

The 2014 Alwan for the Arts Auction will feature artwork by over 30 world-renowned and emerging Middle Eastern artists, providing an opportunity for established and new collectors to acquire works, while supporting the mission of Alwan for the Arts.

"There were two central organizing principles for the work selected for the auction. First, a majority of the artists are from the Middle East or its Diaspora," says Negin Sharifzadeh, curator of the auction. "Some have lived outside of their native country for many decades, while others are much newer to navigating the creation of art in a new cultural context."

The works by the artists selected for the 2014 Alwan Art Auction embody the essential between-ness of being in the Diaspora, or even being in exile at home. Their work wrestles with universal themes, avoiding the obsessive recreation of native themes. Yet their roots still imbue their works, in ways both subtle and obvious.

"I have also chosen to include two video works in the show. It is a medium still under-represented within shows of artists from the region," Sharifzadeh says. "I am hoping to help integrate this no longer new medium into the context of the art gallery and as work to be collected, either as video editions or prints made from the work."

"The art included in this auction means to be politically engaged," says Ahmed Issawi, Artistic Director of Alwan for the Arts, citing the work of Marwan Rechmaoui, a Palestinian artist residing in Lebanon, who will be featured in an exhibit at the New Museum in July, 2014. "Artists Ali Cherri, Mounira Al Solh, and Maya Chami, also Lebanon-based, share the same sentiment, in their own ways, of trying to work out norms, habits, and ways of communication in a society that is plagued by perpetual conflict and instability."

Issawi continues: "Diana Al-Hadid was born in Aleppo, Syria, and her architectural work is layered with discrete civilizational references. It is as if to replicate the city of her birth, now engulfed in ruins of many past histories and civilizations, artifacts, and present conflicts. Al-Hadid's work is at once constructed and transparent but has an imaginary or "dream-like" quality. As such, it embodies material labor and a sense of weightlessness. In her sculptures, panels, and drawings there are always a room for the ghost to walk in and breathe, whereas Mahmoud Hamadani, from Iran, uses simple lines and traces in a perpetual search for form."